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Economic Crisis Hits State College Tuition Rates

One of the best options for tuition cost relief in this economy is the state college or university. Unfortunately, these institutions rely on tax income to help offset their expenses and as the economy shrinks, so does the contribution from the state house.

Here are three stories from newspapers across the country highlighting this frightening trend.

Virginia Hikes Prepaid Tuition 10.3%

Like many states, Virginia offers a program that allows parents to start putting away money when their child is born to guarantee them an education in the state’s university system when they graduate high school. This prepaid amount is modestly adjusted (upward) on an annual basis, but this year, it jumped a whopping 10.3%.

An article in Wednesday’s RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH highlighted this drastic action: “Those forces-a stock market that has hammered investments and tuition increases at state colleges and universities that have outpaced expectations-have prompted the Virginia College Savings Plan to raise prices for pre-paid contracts to bolster the program’s diminished reserve fund.”

The article also noted a dyer forecast from the State Auditor of Public Accounts Walter J. Kucharski, citing: “If the market doesn’t recover . . . you’re going to end up pricing your long-term contracts so nobody can afford to buy them,” he said.

“That is a substantial number, without a doubt,” Rich Stanley, ASU’s senior vice president and senior university planner, said of the proposed 11 percent increase. “The historic level of tuition at the institution hasn’t been high enough to allow us to do the things we need to do to provide the best education for students in Arizona.”

Hoping to give the locals a break, administrators in the Iowa state college program have targeted out of state students for their tuition hike reported the Des Moines Register last week.

“The University of Iowa, by comparison, plans to raise out-of-state tuition by 7.6 percent, a higher rate than the proposed 4.2 percent in-state tuition increase for undergraduates attending all three public schools.”